Ah, my first proper review and blog entry for this group – Transformationplus. I have been a key observer of this group for quite some time now and this is the first time I properly wrote about them since I actually started this whole mastermind group reviews.
As you may have probably guessed, as a regular of this group I have naturally established contact with the main organizer, Prabir and we have become quite good friends. Again, the fruits of networking – you just keep getting more and more friends. Now I’m not about to show off or brag again, but I’m just saying – the more committed and the more involved you are within this whole entrepreneur community, you cannot help but make a lot of friends.
Now who exactly are Prabir and the Transformationplus group? In terms of Prabir himself, I would better off let him tell you about his own story himself. It is better you hear about his journey straight from the man because he does have an epic story to tell. And man, what energy does this guy have. He is probably one of the more switched-on speakers and hosts I’ve come across.
It was also great to see the other members of the Tplus family, such as Co-organizers Prabhjit, Amit and the rest of the team. They all make you feel so welcome like you're on holiday visiting old relatives.
Anyway, if you guessed that Transformationplus is another personal development group then you would have been absolutely right. Now there are a lot of personal development groups out there but there is a reason why I keep following this one. In fact, there are many reasons why. I can advertise and pitch about this group all day long (without profit) but you will never really know what I’m talking about until you attend one of their sessions.
Tonight though was your typical flavor of mind-setting and personal development. As an entrepreneur myself, I tend to immerse myself with mind-setting and personal development stuff. Why? I believe it is the first and foremost absolute most important pathway that an entrepreneur MUST take. Definitely hands down, bar none, no contest, case closed. Personal development must first be taken seriously if you are to excel in any field of business. You can learn all the marketing plans, deal-making strategies, money management, and all these other skills you can acquire out there but if you do not master your internals, then all the knowledge will be totally useless to you as you would not be ‘conditioned’ to apply them properly.
The night began mainly on Prabir’s life story. I already knew some of his trials after speaking to him personally, but let me tell you that he has definitely gone through a lot of ordeals in his time. Well I am not about to write an entire biography on the guy right now, but it is important to be able to relate to his own journey as many of us also do face similar challenges too.
Prabir spoke of very important concepts of changing our THINKING before we talk about HAVING - simple but very true. Most of us like to keep concentrating on what we want to have and what we want to get. According to his simple model, which is shown as THINK -> PLAN -> DO -> HAVE, the very first step MUST start from the THINK.
Again, most of us like to get to the HAVE part straight away and I’ll admit to being a culprit of this too. However, we often like to focus on the HAVE before we do something about the way we THINK.
Prabir also talks about some elements in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, which is a MUST READ for anybody serious about their success. Now again, I am not about to go pitch about how good the book is nor am I getting any cut from advertising it, but its just a very important book. I personally hate reading (which is something I think I’d better change), but if there’s ANY one book you ever read, make it this one. There are tons of good books out there, but majority of them always refer back to the concepts discussed in Think and Grow Rich. Go. Read. It. And read it again. And again.
Anyway, the concepts that Prabir talked about was about FAITH (often goes hand in hand with the notion of ‘auto-suggestion’) and how FAITH is actually induced and strengthened. This is where the ‘power of association’ (in other terms, power of the mastermind, as outlined in TGR. Again, read that book!) comes into play. You simply have to surround yourself with powerful connectors and people who ‘vibrate’ in the same wave length to strengthen the ‘FAITH’ aspect. This could be in reference to the vibrations and the universal responses as implied in Quantum Physics (Quantum… I love that word. It sounds tough.). The theory is that the ‘vibrations’ we emit will come back to us in some way, shape or form. If we ‘vibrate’ strong enough, the ‘universe’ will send some sort of signal or vibration back to us which is proportionate to the strength of the vibration we emit. It is basically the very nerdy technical explanation of ‘what goes around comes around’. Okay, I’m a bit of a newbie when it comes to Quantum Physics (I love saying that. It’s such a gourmet word) so I’ll stop it right there.
Prabir also outlined the difference in FOCUS and THINKING between those who are successful and those who are not. He conducted an interesting exercise, which I like very much. I like it when these hosts play practical exercises. Remember that old saying (I forgot by who) that says “What you hear, you forget. What you see, you remember. What you do, you understand.” This is why I like practical exercises.
We had a volunteer come up and the whole exercise was to look all around the room for anything that is PURPLE in color. A few objects in the room were actually purple in color, like the doors, the hinges, portion of the wall, and even pieces of clothing that some of the attendees wore. Then the volunteer was asked to close his eyes and the Prabir asked him to recite the things that were YELLOW in color. Very clever trick – of course, the volunteer could not remember even though there were a lot of yellow colored things in the room.
The point of the exercise was to show the differences in FOCUS. The gentleman who was the volunteer only noticed the PURPLE objects because that’s what he mainly FOCUSED on. It was a very interesting exercise.
All the concepts Prabir showcased that night were obviously derived from the books he has read and immersed himself in. Some concepts were very familiar to me but some were also ground-breaking and stuff I never heard about before. I was surprised he even understood my whole quip about Quantum Physics (what a hardcore word). This guy definitely has a lot more to offer than meets the eye. I cannot imagine the amount of stuff he has read – I am continually astonished that he gives these subtle hints of all the concepts he has studied – even though it does not seem obvious for somebody who has met him for the first time. He ripped out some concepts that I too was definitely unfamiliar with. I guess we’re always learning aren’t we? Prabir also actually admitted to being somewhat of an NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) practitioner himself.
Before I forget, I also want to mention why this group is another one I tend to follow quite closely. Surprisingly again, the contacts of this network is just…what can I say – I met the big bosses of Primus, IBM, and other giants in different industries through this group. What the heck? Me – in the same room as all these people; let me recap a little bit during a previous meeting which featured a joint event with the Transformation Plus group and the Mokodoo team (who are also run by my friends, Ashish and Shishir) about the Commonwealth Games 2010. The whole meeting featured a panel debate about whether India would be ready to host the Olympics and other issues that were at hand. Although the whole situation was not really to my immediate attention, I was just simply astonished at the fact that I was sitting in the same room, breathing the same air as people like that.
These are HUGE leaders in HUGE industries, whom I was able to meet and shake hands with. These guys are talking BILLIONS and they pretty much decide who lives and who dies in their countries (well that was just a figure of speech, but you know what I mean). Again, I was in the same room as these people and I got to meet them. Yes, each and every one of them.
Drawing from some lessons behind that, I think to myself – what are the differences between me and people like that?
Listening to them talk, these are the things I mainly gathered:
-They think VERY long term within a span of about 10-15 years or so, whereas I was thinking rather short term, like on a weekly basis.
-They think for the benefit of a LARGE society, whereas I think for the benefit of myself mainly.
-They think and look at VERY BIG picture visions, where as I was only thinking about paying my bills, man.
-They think largely for the good of OTHERS and barely about themselves, whereas I was mainly focus on my own stuff.
To sum it up, the only difference between me and those people is simply just one thing – OUR THINKING.
So then I ask myself – what if I change my THINKING to be the same as those people?
What if I start thinking long term, big picture, for the benefit of society in the future instead of thinking inwards, mainly about myself, in the short term, small picture?
I CAN roll with these guys. I CAN be like these guys. I CAN walk with the giants; in fact, I know I can be one myself. If only I changed my thinking. And change I will!
These are some of the major lessons I have learned by staying committed to a group like this.
Anyway it was another excellent night and was great to briefly catch up with the Tplus family. I won’t be around for their next session as I will be overseas – but I suggest you follow them yourself to experience the same value that I always come back for.
-Michaelangelo Flores
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